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Comment by natural219 | Hacker News Reader

Definitely a fan of this project, but I'm intensely curious as to why they separated from Camlistore, which seems like a very similar project and is also headed by a key member of the Go core team (Brad Fitzpatrick). Anybody from either of those two projects care to comment?

Motivation: There are 100s of initiatives trying to solve similar problems, and they could be solved relatively quickly if engineers deigned to work together on a solution instead of splintering off into hundreds of fractured groups.

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Brad Fritzpatrick's response: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13700968

Ah, thanks for the speedy response.

> The main difference I see is that Camlistore can model POSIX filesystems for backup and FUSE, but that's not its preferred view of the world.

This makes me want to throw things. I'm actually mentally discounting both projects now on the charge that core authors seem to care more about bickering over technical details than implementing working solutions to these society-breaking problems.

Andrew Gerrard worked on both and apparently didn't think Camlistore was the right basis for what they wanted in Upspin. But I'm sure you, who I'm not sure has used either project, know better than Andrew and Brad and Rob.

I am claiming I do, yes, and would happily make my case to any of them for why they should do the hard work of agreeing on minor technical details and merge the two projects. It is the easiest instinct for engineers to "split off and code their own version" over technical disagreements, and why we have a dizzying array of incompatible, half-completed decentralization projects while Facebook and Twitter continue to eat society.

Thank you again for the info/backstory, though. I am just a naysayer who has sat through 1000 pitches of Fitzpatrick's basis thesis back in 2010 and seen excruciatingly minimal progress in the space of "actually making these things work for normal people".

I know both projects intimately and they are not "minor technical details" but rather fundamental architectural differences.

I'm happy to discuss this further -- my life-passion-project is to see decentralization through -- but fear I've overstepped my bounds in this thread and am taking away focus from the project at hand, which I am a supporter of.

"I'm actually mentally discounting both projects now " "the project at hand, which I am a supporter of"

Which is it?

I keep a ranking of decentralization projects in terms of how likely they are to succeed and catch on. Camlistore and Upspin have been near the top of my list for years now (Camlistore was the one that originally inspired me to quit my job at Twitch and do decentralization advocacy full-time). I am now slighly less excited about both projects, although they still have incredible potential and I would be overjoyed if either of them met with minor success.

At this point, I get the sense that Upspin/Camlistore don’t really _want_ to succeed in terms of catching mass-market success and disrupting the innovation-stifling tech giants. It seems like they’re more interested in scratching their personal itch and being content with that. Totally fine, but I’m going to be slighly less excited about releases from both of these projects in the future unless I get indications that the core team members are willing to escape the same trap that plagues all standardization schemes (https://xkcd.com/927/)

(Gerrand)

Well that's embarrassing, I've been reading his name online for years and always read it as Gerrard. I'll just blame small fonts, that's it.

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